The Memories of a Soldier
by Ignis Orci
Summary: A series of one-shots through the life of Alicia Washington; rated for language and violence


**Ok, this is going to be quite a long back-history on Alicia Washington, composed of one-shots, starting with her birth and finishing in present-day Terra Nova. It is going to center around her (and not so much the OCs), but fair warning, for the first 15 chapters, there is going to be a pretty heavy OC presence (until she meets Taylor), as we don't know anything about her childhood. I tried to predict what her family would have been like, given her personality, but I could be WAY off from what the show (maybe) will later decide to throw in.**

**Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it.**

The Eyes Have It

When later asked about the event, Dr. Mallory responded truthfully that the birth of Alicia Washington was the strangest he had ever seen. He had been no foreigner to that part of town and the oddities that ensued. The part that housed the crack-whores and low life junkies, the part in which any kid over the age of eleven knew how to handle a weapon – and had, the part that accounted for 97% of the city's crime. That part.

She had been just another baby, born to another family struggling to get by. Unremarkable, perhaps in every way. Which was precisely what made her reception into this world so… extraordinary. He still can remember it, to this day, thousands of deliveries later, some successful, many, not so much. The mother had been lying there, on the couch (they were all just "the mother"; they were all remarkably the same), the father notably absent ("gone for business," she had said. How often he heard that response. He knew, now, to not even ask. The answer never gave him the confidence to bring a new soul into the world.) She had not been the first child, or even the second; no, this baby was a fourth child, born before the Law (as it was known in his profession) outlawed such a thing. In reality, the good doctor had fully supported the pompous old bureaucrats that had come up with that ridiculous piece of legislature, though many would have supposed him to be opposed, given his profession. Somehow, standing in the delivery room now, he felt that each baby would be wanted, needed. Special. Back then, _before_, that would have been a blessing, not a certainty, especially considering his cliental.

It hadn't been the doctor's first trip to the tiny apartment. Three years pervious he had stood in the very room, not to deliver a baby, but to save one. He had done too poor of a job to call it a victory. Strange, how his greatest failure should have been to the same family, resulted of the same woman, laying on the same couch. Probably the same couch she had possessed her entire married life.

He knew of Fatima Washington's past, knew that she had had a very hard labor last time, and that this one would be worse. He had been surprised that she was going to go through with it, especially given that Benjamin, her last child, now three, had been born with severe birth defects. He would never have a normal life, and she was getting old, too old to raise any more children. And then Alicia had come along. That was how he had known that she was a fighter. At that moment, though, she didn't seem able to fight any longer. Her breathing dangerously shallow, she was spiraling downward, a fever raging, and tearing each gasping breath from her inflamed lungs. Her eyes rolled back into her head.

"Stay with me! You're almost there, Fatima! She's crowning; push!"

Ten minutes later, it was done. The first remarkable thing was that the baby had lived at all. But she was perfect, he reflected, holding her in his gloved hands, checking her breathing. She was strong, squeezing his finger with a tiny hand, not big enough to wrap around even his pinky. She was, in many respects, a miracle weighing just less than eight pounds. Fatima was clearly done, having spent everything she had to get her baby into the world, alive and healthy; there was no question, in the doctor's mind, that it would be her last child. Because now she was convulsing, retching, and so Dr. Mallory broke the first rule of midwifery. He set the baby down on the floor and crossed the small space in two strides, hurrying to save her mother. Just two minutes; that's all it had taken. Two minutes to administer some medication, to calm her frantic heartbeat.

Two minutes were all it had taken for the newly born baby to go missing.

Dr. Mallory searched the tiny flat over once, twice. On his third circuit of the home, he heard it. At first, he thought that it was the heater, which was horribly out of date in most of the homes in this neighborhood, barely providing enough heat to dull the bite of the winter wind through the drafty walls, but then he heard a decidedly un-heater-like cry to accompany the earlier hiss that he had attributed to vaporized water. Cautiously approaching the closet, he pressed his ear to the door.

"Shhhhh! Be quiet! You'll wake mom!"

He threw open the door, to the surprise of the three little boys sitting within. The oldest, no more than 13 years old, held the little girl, wrapped in a rough towel, protectively against his chest, her miniature features still marred with blood. After a moment, the boy managed to turn his expression of shock into a glare, fiercely protective of the little sister he had just met. The doctor had never before seen that look on the face of a 13 year old boy.

That day, when he walked down the front steps of the apartment building, there was no doubt in his mind that that little girl would be wanted. It still brings a smile to his lips. Sometimes, he wonders what happened to that boy. He had heard about Alicia, oh yes, heard that she was recruited to accompany the famous Commander Taylor to a new paradise by the name of Terra Nova. He had heard that she had gotten out of the slums, and somehow, the story fit the little girl he met for the first and last time that morning. He couldn't help feeling, though, that his job had been made entirely insignificant by that boy's protective glare.

Yes, he had cleaned off the girl, instructed her older brother what to do in an emergency, written down her name on a piece of paper ("Alicia," he had said firmly. "Don't you want to wait for your mother to wake up?" "No. Her name is Alicia."), but then he had left, never to be seen again by those dark brown eyes that had broken his heart. Another prize for the shambles of poverty to claim. But he knew, without knowing how, that that boy and his brothers had made Alicia Washington into the strong, capable soldier that she would one day become, the soldier that would break the pattern.

It had been in his eyes.


End file.
